Exclusive | How antisemitic professors including Mayor Zohran Mamdanis father have poisoned Columbia University

During the 2023-2024 House Education committee’s hearings on campus antisemitism in the wake of Hamas attacks on Israel, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) pressed the presidents of Columbia, Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania: Did calling for the genocide of Jews violate their schools’ rules on bullying and harassment? They were largely unable to answer with real clarity.Within months, three of the four presidents had resigned.

In her new book, “Poisoned Ivies,” Stefanik explores how elite universities ended up in a moral rot that’s fueled by groupthink, abandonment of viewpoint diversity and a system of far-left indoctrination.In this excerpt, she shines a light on a group of professors — including Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s father — spreading anti-Jewish bias at Columbia University.Immediately following Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, American Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia faced vile slurs and constant threats to their physical safety.

Less than one week after October 7th, a former Columbia undergraduate assaulted an Israeli student with a stick while tearing down posters of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.According to a report, “the violent assailant shouted ‘F–k you.

F–k all you prick crackers.’” The perpetrator was eventually prosecuted for charges including second-degree and third-degree assault.This was hardly the only incident. The problem of anti-Jewish bias, and even abuse of Jewish and pro-Israel students, is long-standing at Columbia.Antisemitism has found homes in whole departments and fields of study, to the extent that students dare not enter, for example, the notorious Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) if they hold pro-Israel opinions. Take, for example, Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Middle Eastern Studies Department.

He began teaching at Columbia in 1999 and was granted tenure...